Colombo, Media and Communications, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War

Launch of Groundviews 2.0: New features, enhanced readability, comprehensive search

Regular readers of Groundviews would have noticed the site upgrade that went live last week. The new website sports a complete overhaul of underlying site technologies and presentation.

Content is now presented in an easier to read font and format. More white space enhances readability and the rolling features tabs on the homepage allow readers to go directly to articles that are topical. Other key features of Groundviews 2.0 include:

  • The critically acclaimed special editions and other key sections of Groundviews are now more easily discoverable through the top menu
  • A completely overhauled site search, now powered by Google, means that the full power of the world’s leading search engine is available on Groundviews as well. The same boolean operators and advanced search features of Google can now be leveraged on the site. Combined with a brand new archives page, the new archive page addresses one of the most requested features of the site.
  • HTML5 (i.e. non-Flash based) video and standards based site design means that content will display on all modern browsers as well as iPhone’s and iPad’s.
  • Tight integration with Facebook and Twitter makes it easier to share and highlight content on two of the world’s leading social networks
  • Easy to use email subscription powered by Google’s Feedburner means that full articles are available in your inbox without ever having to visit the site.
  • Integration with Instapaper is a boon for researchers and even regular readers. Instapaper is a free and simple tool to save all web pages on the site for reading or printing later, and is available across all browsers and even on the iPhone and iPad.
  • Powered by Apture, double click on any word or phrase on any page, and the site now features a comprehensive, elegant inline search for content related to the word(s) from the site, as well as from the larger web.
  • The site is optimised for mobile browsers. On any iOS device, Symbian phone or Nokia browser, the site will display a version optimised for mobile browsing. The full version of the site is only a click away for mobile devices capable of rich content display, such as the iPhone, iPad or any Android browser.

The site update has preserved links from the previous avatar and Google indexing. What this means is that references to site content made for example in academic journals are still valid, and that existing indexing of site content on Google is unaffected by the upgrade. As before, full-length RSS feeds for new content as well as comments are available on the site, which can be incorporated into any RSS feed reader.

There are a lot more technical upgrades to the back-end of the site that enhance reliability, scaleability and content discoverability.

With over two and half million words of original content, and at last count, close to around three million words of commentary, Groundviews is a sui generis trove of critical debate and content for researchers, historians and others interested narratives beyond government propaganda and the bias of mainstream media.

We welcome you to engage with this content, and support us in our work over 2011 and beyond.